From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 10 1998 - 18:46:59 EST
At 6:42 AM -0600 12/9/98, Ward Powers wrote:
>Dear Carl,
>
>This is an off-list response. I was interested in your comments about
>Machen. For myself, in the practical business of teaching, I have found the
>kind of very condensed approach which Machen takes is much too compact for
>most students to easily understand. Hence in my "Learning To Read the GNT"
>I cover the topic in more detail, giving GNT examples of each kind of
>situation, and spelling out the distinction between the attributive and
>predicative uses.
>
>If you have the necessary few minutes to spare to look at it, I would be
>most interested in your comment on pages 92 to 94 of my grammar.
Dear Ward,
I have now had an opportunity to check the pages you've indicated in your textbook, and I will readily grant that they present a clear explanation of the distinction between attributive and predicate positions of the article in relationship to noun and article. I like also your citation of several examples directly from the GNT illustrating each of these arrangements.
As I indicated to you in my initial response yesterday, my reason for citing Machen was not out of any preference but because Paul Evans said he had learned Greek from Machen and couldn't recall that Machen had dealt with it. I then said that I didn't see how one could get very far in Beginning Greek without dealing with it, and sooner rather than later--and Machen, an inferior textbook certainly, in my view, does deal with it, perhaps not altogether in the way you or I would prefer, but definitely and not inaccurately. In one respect, he even makes a point that you don't mention that is, I think, important: that the article is not always present, in which case we are left without a clear indication whether an adjective is predicative or attributive:
>>"#74. It should be observed that the distinction between the
>>attributive and the predicate position of the adjective can be made
>>in Greek only when the noun has the article. AGAQOS LOGOS or LOGOS
>>AGAQOS (the noun here not having the article) may mean either 'a good
>>word' (attributive) or 'a word is good' (predicate)."
Finally, another point I found interesting in your discussion was your assertion, on page 94 (#7.55), that 1 Tim 5:18 cites Luke 10:7 as scripture. I have some difficulty with that assertion myself, not so much in terms of the authority-status of the cited texts, but as reading more out of the identical text of Lk 10:7 and 1 Tim 5:18b than is warranted by the identical text in and of itself. Obviously nothing can be proven in this instance one way or the other, but I personally think it much more likely, in view of 1 Cor 9:13-14 and Mt 10:10 (AXIOS hO ERGATHS THS TROFHS AUTOU) that AXIOS hO ERGATHS TOU MISQOU AUTOU is a dominical saying, an oral tradition of a remembered Jesus-saying that is drawn in each of these passages from a common tradition, rather than that 1 Tim 5:18 is directly citing Luke's gospel AS SCRIPTURE. I'd even be hesitant to affirm with any great conviction that Luke's gospel antedates 1 Timothy; I am personally inclined to date Luke's gospel after 70 at the earliest, while 1 Tim, if it i
s authentically Pauline (which I doubt), must be at least a decade earlier than that. I make no affirmation one way or the other, but simply note that the view that 1 Tim cites Luke's gospel directly as scripture seems not very plausible. I'm not sure either that hH GRAFH in 1 Tim 5:18 refers to both passages cited, although it surely refers at least to the passage from Deuteronomy. But if, as others (not I alone) have argued, the second passage cited here is what Paul in 1 Cor 7:25 calls an EPITAGH KURIOU such as he deems to have far greater authority than what he urges as his own advice as one ELEHMENOS hUPO KURIOU PISTOS EINAI, then it's easy to see why he could in 1 Tim 5:18 set that EPITAGH on a par with hH GRAFH, i.e. with Deuteronomy. I don't say that you're wrong on this matter, but that I think the appearance of an identical text in Lk 10:7 and in 1 Tim 5:18 may be explained otherwise and no less plausibly than as you've set forth here.
Be that as it may, I like your textbook, and I am calling it to the attention of a former grad student who wrote a doctoral dissertation on Acts with me and who pastors now in Mobile, Alabama; he's going to be teaching NT Greek in the spring and has asked about NT Greek textbooks; I've sent him information about those I know of, and have included yours with a favorable notice. I wish I could add a recommendation of Robert Funk's "Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek"--a very nice presentation of Biblical Greek in a radically revised linguistic framework; if I could, I'd urge him to publish one less book from the Jesus Seminar and republish that textbook instead. But that's dreaming.
Best regards to you, and I wish you and your family a blessed Christmas,
Carl
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